He will spend the last day of his employment limping around on crutches, apparently after breaking his toe at work the day before he was due to leave.

The keen tweeter wrote: "Pinky toes really don't like to be rammed into a staircase railing. Happened at work; at urgent care now. *sigh*"

Staff at the San Francisco flagship store are expected to mark his exit in a ceremony known as "clapping out", which is the same round of applause that greets the arrival of new products.

Despite being something of a thorn in the notoriously union-averse Apple's side, Moll took to Twitter after his accident to gush about his employers.

In a line worthy of Steve Jobs himself, he wrote: "Enriching lives is what we do, and I feel mine has been enriched too."

His demob-happy attitude contrasts sharply with his former criticisms of Apple, which have included the claim that a "top issue" for shop employees was their low wages. Moll pointed out that shiny happy Apple staff earn so little that they can't afford to live in the metropolitan areas in which the fruity firm likes to site its stores, let alone buy its products.

Moll was also concerned about promotion opportunities and wanted staff to be guaranteed their working hours in the stores.

Apple seemed to heed his concerns, however, and last year announced a pay hike of up to 25 per cent for its 42,400 American shop employees and a discount scheme on their products.

The Register understands that Apple retail workers in the UK are not unionised. The USDAW union, which represents shop workers, claimed that not one Apple shop drone has made contact about having the union formally recognised by Apple.

The French, who need little encouragement to down tools, have a fairly strong Apple union which held a strike on the day of the release of the iPhone 5.

Workers in France recently took Apple to court and successfully managed to stop the fondleslab-pusher from making them clean the shops late at night. The fruity firm had to cough up €10,000 in damages.